The Stock-Dove 41 



than a cushat should be ? or that he wears dark 

 spots on his oar feathers ? Then the hour is 

 usually dusk ; the stock-dove is just about the size of 

 a Norwegian wood-pigeon newly landed on British 

 shores ; and so it often happens that he falls, when 

 recognised he had perhaps been spared. The farmer's 

 feud does not extend to him at all, or would not do so 

 if he were better known ; for to him is referable much 

 of the good with which the cushat is credited. It is 

 known that the latter is an inveterate thief, loving the 

 husbandman's corn as nothing but the forbidden thing 

 is loved ; but the stock-dove has a genuine relish for 

 wild mustard-seed and other pests of the field which his 

 cousin will only eat under compulsion. If you doubt 

 it, shoot a couple in the act of feeding together, or, 

 better still, shoot half-a-dozen of both species ; and 

 when you open their crops, you will find that 

 in the same field they have elected to feed on 

 different stuffs. Of course that is speaking roughly ; 

 for what one will peck at so will the other. 



Another proof of the stock-dove's cultivated habit 

 is his dislike of a British winter. A rough, a coarse, 

 a democratic cushat may choose as he will to shiver 

 on naked fence and icy bough, to pine for hunger and 

 die of cold in our wild climate ; but when the wind 

 begins to breathe the chill of the snow, when the water in 

 the turnip-drills turns to ice and foraging grows diffi- 

 cult, then does the stock-dove hie him away to his 

 winter resort in the milder parts of Europe. There 



